Spies of No Country

Spies of No Country PDF Author: Matti Friedman
Publisher: Signal
ISBN: 0771038828
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
From the award-winning and critically-acclaimed author of Pumpkinflowers, the never-before-told story of the mysterious "Arab Section": the Jewish-"Arab" spies who, under deep cover in Beirut as refugees, helped the new State of Israel win the War of Independence. In his third non-fiction book, Matti Friedman introduces us to four unknown young men who are caught up in the fraught events surrounding the birth of Israel in 1948 and drawn into secret lives, becoming the nucleus of Israel's intelligence service. The tiny, amateur unit known as the "Arab Section" was conceived during WWII by British spies and by Jewish militia leaders in Palestine. Consisting of Jews from Arab countries who could pass as Arabs, it was meant to gather intelligence and carry out sabotage and assassinations. When the first Jewish-Arab war erupted in 1948 and Palestinian refugees began fleeing the fighting, a small number of Section agents disguised as refugees joined the exodus. They fled to Beirut, where they spent the next two years under cover, sending messages back to Israel over a radio antenna disguised as a clothesline. Of the dozen men in the unit at the war's beginning, five were caught and executed. Espionage, John le Carré once wrote, is the "secret theater of our society." Spies of No Country is not just a spy story, but a surprising window into the nature of Israel--a country that sees itself as belonging to the story of Europe, but where more than half of the population is native to the Middle East. Starring complicated characters with slippery identities moving in the shadow of great events, Spies of No Country tells a very different story about what Israel is and how it was created.

Spies of No Country

Spies of No Country PDF Author: Matti Friedman
Publisher: Signal
ISBN: 0771038828
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
From the award-winning and critically-acclaimed author of Pumpkinflowers, the never-before-told story of the mysterious "Arab Section": the Jewish-"Arab" spies who, under deep cover in Beirut as refugees, helped the new State of Israel win the War of Independence. In his third non-fiction book, Matti Friedman introduces us to four unknown young men who are caught up in the fraught events surrounding the birth of Israel in 1948 and drawn into secret lives, becoming the nucleus of Israel's intelligence service. The tiny, amateur unit known as the "Arab Section" was conceived during WWII by British spies and by Jewish militia leaders in Palestine. Consisting of Jews from Arab countries who could pass as Arabs, it was meant to gather intelligence and carry out sabotage and assassinations. When the first Jewish-Arab war erupted in 1948 and Palestinian refugees began fleeing the fighting, a small number of Section agents disguised as refugees joined the exodus. They fled to Beirut, where they spent the next two years under cover, sending messages back to Israel over a radio antenna disguised as a clothesline. Of the dozen men in the unit at the war's beginning, five were caught and executed. Espionage, John le Carré once wrote, is the "secret theater of our society." Spies of No Country is not just a spy story, but a surprising window into the nature of Israel--a country that sees itself as belonging to the story of Europe, but where more than half of the population is native to the Middle East. Starring complicated characters with slippery identities moving in the shadow of great events, Spies of No Country tells a very different story about what Israel is and how it was created.

The Aleppo Codex

The Aleppo Codex PDF Author: Matti Friedman
Publisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN: 161620270X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Winner of the 2014 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature A thousand years ago, the most perfect copy of the Hebrew Bible was written. It was kept safe through one upheaval after another in the Middle East, and by the 1940s it was housed in a dark grotto in Aleppo, Syria, and had become known around the world as the Aleppo Codex. Journalist Matti Friedman’s true-life detective story traces how this precious manuscript was smuggled from its hiding place in Syria into the newly founded state of Israel and how and why many of its most sacred and valuable pages went missing. It’s a tale that involves grizzled secret agents, pious clergymen, shrewd antiquities collectors, and highly placed national figures who, as it turns out, would do anything to get their hands on an ancient, decaying book. What it reveals are uncomfortable truths about greed, state cover-ups, and the fascinating role of historical treasures in creating a national identity.

Pumpkinflowers

Pumpkinflowers PDF Author: Matti Friedman
Publisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN: 161620608X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
“A book about young men transformed by war, written by a veteran whose dazzling literary gifts gripped my attention from the first page to the last.” —The Wall Street Journal “Friedman’s sober and striking new memoir . . . [is] on a par with Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried -- its Israeli analog.” —The New York Times Book Review It was just one small hilltop in a small, unnamed war in the late 1990s, but it would send out ripples that are still felt worldwide today. The hill, in Lebanon, was called the Pumpkin; flowers was the military code word for “casualties.” Award-winning writer Matti Friedman re-creates the harrowing experience of a band of young Israeli soldiers charged with holding this remote outpost, a task that would change them forever, wound the country in ways large and small, and foreshadow the unwinnable conflicts the United States would soon confront in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. Pumpkinflowers is a reckoning by one of those young soldiers now grown into a remarkable writer. Part memoir, part reportage, part history, Friedman’s powerful narrative captures the birth of today’s chaotic Middle East and the rise of a twenty-first-century type of war in which there is never a clear victor and media images can be as important as the battle itself. Raw and beautifully rendered, Pumpkinflowers will take its place among classic war narratives by George Orwell, Philip Caputo, and Tim O’Brien. It is an unflinching look at the way we conduct war today.

Every Spy A Prince: The Complete History of Israel’s Intelligence Community

Every Spy A Prince: The Complete History of Israel’s Intelligence Community PDF Author: Dan Raviv
Publisher: Plunkett Lake Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 520

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Book Description
On the New York Times Best Seller list for 12 weeks (August 12-October 28, 1990) “This is a comprehensive history of Israel’s security establishment. The authors celebrate successes like Eichmann’s capture, but far more interestingly, they do not shy away from examining the security services’ failures... the book is riveting because Israel’s early intelligence feats still resonate in today’s world... the book makes valuable reading for anyone interested in Israel’s world-wide plans to deal with matters affecting its security.” — Wall Street Journal “The authors... obviously found enough talkative sources... to provide them with the remarkable case histories they describe here. Even though some of the Israeli operatives sound boastful, the book is not propaganda or disinformation. While it is filled with many examples of how Mossad pulled off major coups, the authors are at pains to point out that the Israelis sometimes goofed... The authors flesh out stories that once made headlines with fresh material. Not all the Israeli intelligence triumphs involved violence. The Israelis managed to outrun the C.I.A. and all of Western Europe’s spy agencies in getting their hands on a copy of Nikita S. Khrushchev’s secret speech in 1956 to a special Communist Party Congress in Moscow that exposed the horrors of the Stalin era... The story of the 1960 capture in Buenos Aires of Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi war criminal, by Mossad and Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, is lovingly re-created. A high point of Israeli intelligence came in 1967, during the Six-Day War, when foreknowledge of enemy positions and abilities paved the way for a rapid victory. The astonishing rescue in 1976 by army commandos of hijacked passengers from Entebbe airport in distant Uganda gained added respect for Israel in the Western world. Against the triumphs, the authors balance these failures: Mossad’s misjudgments in Lebanon, Shin Bet’s killings of Arab terrorists in captivity, and the involvement of Israel in the disarray of Irangate. In addition, double agents were used in Britain and caught there; an American, Jonathan Pollard, was encouraged to spy and sell military secrets to Israel, and faulty intelligence resulted in ‘misleading the Government over the future of the occupied territories, just as a Palestinian uprising was beginning.’... [a] highly revealing book.” — New York Times “Everything you wanted to know about Israel’s spies and secret services — but were afraid to discover. This comprehensive history and analysis of the Israeli intelligence community offers many original insights into the secret psyche of the Jewish State... The book presents new information on some of Israel’s greatest intelligence coups and failures.” — Kirkus “Basing their work on interviews with former operatives and on declassified documents, CBS news correspondent Raviv and Israeli journalist Melman here produced a revealing critical history of the rise and decline of Israel’s vaunted security and intelligence arm.“ — Publishers Weekly “[A] detailed history of Israel’s intelligence agencies.“ — Washington Post “Every Spy a Prince is by far the best book ever published on Israel’s intelligence community, filled with new and fascinating information, skillfully and intelligently written and, above all, bold and judicious in its assessments of the triumphs and failures of one of the most remarkable espionage organizations in the world.” — San Francisco Chronicle “A highly readable, well-organized portrait of the main Israeli intelligence services .. . . Every Spy a Prince is a valuable, balanced addition to the mushrooming literature about the world’s second oldest profession.” — Newsday

Spies in Arabia

Spies in Arabia PDF Author: Priya Satia
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019971598X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 473

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Book Description
At the dawn of the twentieth century, British intelligence agents began to venture in increasing numbers to the Arab lands of the Ottoman Empire, a region of crucial geopolitical importance spanning present-day Iraq, Jordan, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. They were drawn by the twin objectives of securing the land route to India and finding adventure and spiritualism in a mysterious and ancient land. But these competing desires created a dilemma: how were they to discreetly and patriotically gather facts in a region they were drawn to for its legendary inscrutability and by the promise of fame and escape from Britain? In this groundbreaking book, Priya Satia tracks the intelligence community's tactical grappling with this problem and the myriad cultural, institutional, and political consequences of their methodological choices during and after the Great War. She tells the story of how an imperial state in thrall to the cultural notions of equivocal agents and beset by an equally captivated and increasingly assertive mass democracy invented a wholly new style of "covert empire" centered on the world's first brutal aerial surveillance regime in Iraq. Drawing on a wealth of archival sources--from the fictional to the recently declassified--this book explains how Britons reconciled genuine ethical scruples with the actual violence of their Middle Eastern empire. As it vividly demonstrates how imperialism was made fit for an increasingly democratic and anti-imperial world, what emerges is a new interpretation of the military, cultural, and political legacies of the Great War and of the British Empire in the twentieth century. Unpacking the romantic fascination with "Arabia" as the land of espionage, Spies in Arabia presents a stark tale of poetic ambition, war, terror, and failed redemption--and the prehistory of our present discontents.

Spies of the Balkans

Spies of the Balkans PDF Author: Alan Furst
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0812977386
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Greece, 1940. In the port city of Salonika, with its wharves and brothels, dark alleys and Turkish mansions, a tense political drama is being played out. As Adolf Hitler plans to invade the Balkans, spies begin to circle—and Costa Zannis, a senior police official, must deal with them all. He is soon in the game, working to secure an escape route for fugitives from Nazi Berlin that is protected by German lawyers, Balkan detectives, and Hungarian gangsters—and hunted by the Gestapo. Meanwhile, as war threatens, the erotic life of the city grows passionate. For Zannis, that means a British expatriate who owns the local ballet academy, a woman from the dark side of Salonika society, and the wife of a shipping magnate. With extraordinary historical detail and a superb cast of characters, Spies of the Balkans is a stunning novel about a man who risks everything to fight back against the world’s evil.

Red Sea Spies

Red Sea Spies PDF Author: Raffi Berg
Publisher: Icon Books
ISBN: 1785786016
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
THE TRUE STORY THAT INSPIRED THE NETFLIX FILM THE RED SEA DIVING RESORT. 'Secret missions, brazen deceptions and thrilling, clandestine operations - Red Sea Spies has it all. But it has something more important, too - a genuine human mission that made a difference.' David Hoffman, author of The Billion Dollar Spy '[A] thrilling and meticulous account.' The Times In the early 1980s on a remote part of the Sudanese coast, a new luxury holiday resort opened for business. Catering for divers, it attracted guests from around the world. Little did the holidaymakers know that the staff were undercover spies, working for the Mossad - the Israeli secret service. Providing a front for covert night-time activities, the holiday village allowed the agents to carry out an operation unlike any seen before. What began with one cryptic message pleading for help, turned into the secret evacuation of thousands of Ethiopian Jews who had been languishing in refugee camps, and the spiriting of them to Israel. Written in collaboration with operatives involved in the mission, endorsed as the definitive account and including an afterword from the commander who went on to become the head of the Mossad, this is the complete, never-before-heard, gripping tale of a top-secret and often hazardous operation. 'Red Sea Spies is what really happened. There is none of the Hollywood colouring-in, and yet the book is all the more vivid for it ... part thriller, part dark comedy, all true ... Berg brings out the native drama in an improbable story of a clandestine homecoming.' Spectator

Spies Against Armageddon

Spies Against Armageddon PDF Author: Dan Raviv
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780985437893
Category : Intelligence service
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Authors' names reversed in original Hebrew printing.

War of Shadows

War of Shadows PDF Author: Gershom Gorenberg
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1610396286
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 475

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Book Description
In this World War II military history, Rommel's army is a day from Cairo, a week from Tel Aviv, and the SS is ready for action. Espionage brought the Nazis this far, but espionage can stop them—if Washington wakes up to the danger. As World War II raged in North Africa, General Erwin Rommel was guided by an uncanny sense of his enemies' plans and weaknesses. In the summer of 1942, he led his Axis army swiftly and terrifyingly toward Alexandria, with the goal of overrunning the entire Middle East. Each step was informed by detailed updates on British positions. The Nazis, somehow, had a source for the Allies' greatest secrets. Yet the Axis powers were not the only ones with intelligence. Brilliant Allied cryptographers worked relentlessly at Bletchley Park, breaking down the extraordinarily complex Nazi code Enigma. From decoded German messages, they discovered that the enemy had a wealth of inside information. On the brink of disaster, a fevered and high-stakes search for the source began. War of Shadows is the cinematic story of the race for information in the North African theater of World War II, set against intrigues that spanned the Middle East. Years in the making, this book is a feat of historical research and storytelling, and a rethinking of the popular narrative of the war. It portrays the conflict not as an inevitable clash of heroes and villains but a spiraling series of failures, accidents, and desperate triumphs that decided the fate of the Middle East and quite possibly the outcome of the war.

Spies in Palestine

Spies in Palestine PDF Author: James Srodes
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1640090053
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Sarah Aaronsohn was a twenty–first century woman in a nineteenth–century world. She and her siblings were born as part of the first wave of Jewish immigrants who fled the pogroms of Russia and Eastern Europe in the 1880s, settling in the province of Syria–Palestine. By the outbreak of World War I in 1914 the settlers had come a dramatic distance in creating the Eretz Israel of their Biblical prophecies. Sarah's home village of Zichron Ya'akov brought prosperity to their lands between the Mediterranean coast and the Mount Carmel range. But when the Ottoman Turkish Empire sided with Kaiser Wilhelm II and the other Central Powers in World War I, the Jewish settlements faced cruel oppressions. This book describes how the Aaronsohns, one of the most prominent families in the province, came to commit themselves and their comrades to the Allied side and how they formed the NILI espionage organization to spy against the Turkish Army. Late in the war, in 1917, Sarah assumed command of the spy network as the group's penetration of the Turkish army reached a critical juncture. Sarah was idolized by T.E. Lawrence, the fabled Lawrence of Arabia who dedicated his flowery biography, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, to her.